Zach h. Tucker

A New Chapter in Bright

Reading back through the history, I feel the same need to recollect as those who went before me, gathering the images and occurrences that transformed a building into a landmark. There were the conversations amongst farmers around the old pug stove as they brought their eggs and crop in for trade, school kids trading in bottles for a nickel to buy a soda and some penny candy, or the Friday nights spent upstairs watching a wrestling match on the town’s only television.  

With its location in the middle of town, it becoming a meeting place was inevitable, as well as good business. But that had faded over the years. Changing ownership and expected depreciation has taken its toll, like every other institution in an ever changing world. But with change comes new opportunities, new stories to tell, more history to make. Our family is excited to facilitate those new stories by providing a refreshed, communal space centered around a coffee shop coming soon, for anyone and everyone to gather. With that future history as the focal point, we would like to announce the launch of historicrencksstore.com, a place for collecting those stories and memories, a place to facilitate those same kinds of gatherings, like those old timers did not so long ago. 

I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard ‘the future is Bright,’ about as many times as I’ve heard ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ I used to think those were incompatible viewpoints, that the old ways had to be paved over to make way for that Bright future. Now, I see the value of embracing the passage of time, seeing my place, our place, in all of it. I see what the old Renck’s Store can be, and I envision taking my kids there, gathering around a table like those old timers, probably telling the same stories they told, becoming a part of history. It’s a comfort I’m only now starting to understand, an appreciation of what those who came before me built, like the Rencks, or T.H. Gibson, and that I will get to be a part of the history that someone a hundred years from now will read.

March 01, 2024

A year ago, my family bought the old Renck’s Store. I should say repurchased it, as my grandpa, Jerry Tucker, was the owner at one point in its storied history. It has been many things; the general store, a flower shop, a gas station, a gun shop, even the home of this very publication, but I remember it most as the place I went after kindergarten. I’d walk in around lunch, and the old timers would be sitting, eating sandwiches, telling stories, normal old timer behavior. I don’t remember what exactly they were talking about, I just remember it feeling like an institution, something that had existed long before me and would continue on into perpetuity, as if I were a part of history.